Monrovia – The Chair of the Liberian Senate’s committee on education Senator Dallas Gueh says the government is financially challenged and will need the help of donors to improve the education sector.
His comments come as the Legislature faces questions from campaigners of the More4Education campaign for a total of 20 percent increment of the education budget.
“At this juncture, we can only look up to our partners to say where we failed or have had shortcomings, we will ask you people to come in and help us because there is no way that we can run away from this reality of our economic downturn and the challenges we face in the educational sector,” said Senator Gueh on Wednesday, October 23.
He was speaking at the More4Education Partnership Conference on Education Financing held at the Bella Casa Hotel in Sinkor.
“We need to ensure that more is done for the educational sector in terms of funding. We are all aware that since the war, the educational sector continues to remain a very serious challenge for the government of Liberia,” he said.
“The economy is bad but I can tell anybody here that we have no excuse as a government, where we find ourselves today is ugly and it is on us to do what we ought to do.”
He named some of the challenges faced by the sector as the provision of adequate and contemporary text books for students and the lack of monitoring, evaluation and supervision by the Ministry of Education.
Referencing River Cess County, which he represents at the Senate, he outlined several challenges affecting the county.
“I just came from Rivercess [county] on Sunday and there is a particular district I visited close to the border with Nimba County and they have not seen their district supervisor for the past four-five months and many other places,” he said.
According to the Senate’s Chair on Education, the Ministry of Education must revise the curriculum every five years so that schools can be on par with others in the region.
“If our curriculum is not made contemporary with other West African countries, then of course we are far behind,” he stressed.
For seven years now since the emergence of the More4Eduacation campaign with the help of USAID and other partners, the Legislature in 2018 added just one percent to education in the national budget.
Another one percent was added in 2019, making it a total of 15 percent allotment to the education sector in the National Budget.
Campaigners are still hopeful that the Legislature will further increase the percentage to at least 20.
Making a power-point presentation, the Program Officer of the Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia (CENTAL), Gerald Dan Yeakula said: “although education attainment has climbed from 27.1%, in 1980 to 52.7% in 2015, about 47.3% of the nation’s population remains grossly illiterate, peaking above the regional average of 34%.”
He added: “The above figure depicts the nation lags behind neighboring Sierra Leone, which stands at 125%, Ghana 107% and Guinea 98%, all in 2016 respectively free and compulsory primary education policy is gaining steam, but is far from reaching full potential.”
Meanwhile, the Chief of Party of the Liberia Accountability Voice Initiative (LAVI), Malica Panic lauded the Government for responding to the More4Education campaign by increasing the national budget to 15.7% from 13.7%.
But Panic stressed that it is still far below the 20%, which is being sought.
“There is still a long way to go. Sierra Leone is at 27%, and Senegal and Ghana at 35% – and as a result we have received more funding from Global Partnership for education,” she said.
She added that LAVI will continue to support education partners to engage lawmakers and the government to allocate a minimum of 20% for the educational sector.
“I hope that today’s event will provide a space for all of us stakeholders to openly discuss these challenges and collectively seek policy solutions which will further enhance education sector financing,” she said.
Also making remarks, the Executive Director of YOCEL, Beyan Pewee called on the participants to invest more in education because it is a key priority and tool for the advancement of any nation.
“There is nothing better than investing in education. We can only see transformation in education if we depoliticized the sector,” Beyan stated.
The objective of the education conference is to solicit stakeholder buy-in and support for a minimum 20% of the National Budget for the education sector and to identify alternative domestic resource mobilization to increase financing.